Both the Kangaroo & Emu are on our Coat of Arms & considered national treasures. We have another national treasure that might find itself on our Coat of Arms one day and that is our beloved Holden (pronounced without the “e” and with a Col’n Carpenter voice).
Hold’n forms part of the global General Motors operations and is the largest manufacturer of motor vehicles in Australia. They started manufacturing saddles in the 1800’s before manufacturing bed pans or some such at the turn of the century. In 1948 they manufactured the first Australian vehicle (tested in USA) the 48/215 (later to become known as the FX). Their most famous and arguably most advanced model followed, the mighty FJ Hold’n.
In later years they were to re-badge the Vauxhall Viva as a Torana and an Opel vehicle as the new Commode. Vehicles models have in fact been sourced from just about anywhere from South Korea, Germany & I have more than a sneaking suspicion, Beijing & Bombay. They are also known to offload the finished product to places like China as well.
Well the Aussie motor vehicle industry is just about buggered because we keep buying stuff from overseas but by doing so at least we are buying back some of the steel we sold as ore. Anyway we better get that Hold'n on the Coat of Arms before it ends up like the Tasmanian Tiger.